


shrine

by blackkat



Series: Contraption [3]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Families of Choice, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mind Control, Order 66, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:26:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25186345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: Wolffe's lost more in his lifetime than anyone should be expected to, has seen more tragedy than thousands of other souls put together, and he'stired.There's a temple, far away from everything, that isn't quite a respite, but—maybe it's the closest he can find, these days.
Relationships: CC-10/994 | Grey & Caleb Dume, CC-3636 | Wolffe & CC-10/994 | Grey, CC-3636 | Wolffe & Caleb Dume, Depa Billaba/CC-10/994 | Grey (past), Mace Windu/CC-3636 | Wolffe
Series: Contraption [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706854
Comments: 44
Kudos: 629
Collections: Jedi Journals





	shrine

**Author's Note:**

> The gremlins in my discord recommend tissues.

Wolffe is tired down to his very bones.

Yavin IV is in the middle of its rainy season, and it’s been pouring since Wolffe landed. If there's any sort of break in the clouds, he can't see it, and he makes his way around the base of the great temple with careful steps, minding the streams that curl around the rocks and drip from the tall trees. Maybe someone more charitable would call it pretty, but Wolffe resents it with a vague, bullish belligerence that’s only partially the fault of the weather.

Of all the places in the galaxy to end up, this is probably the worst, he thinks, uncharitably, and shoves through another spray of too-long leaves, soaking himself even further despite his rain gear. With an annoyed grunt, Wolffe shoves his hood back, taking the heavy splatter of the rain as long as he gets a little more visibility in return, and squints through the heavy rainfall towards one of the corners of the massive stone temple that looms above him. The steps leading up are running thick with water, pooling all around the base, but up ahead there's a narrow path of stones that have been built up far enough that they peek above the water’s surface.

It’s too clear a tell. He grimaces a little, shifting his blaster back, and makes for them. This is something he’s going to have to yell at someone about; if there's any more obvious sign of their presence than _landscaping_ —

There's a snapping hum, a hiss of rain evaporating, and a blade of burning blue plasma comes to rest half an inch from Wolffe’s throat.

“Identify yourself,” a voice says, quiet but grim, unwavering. The blade doesn’t so much as twitch, and Wolffe eyes it, then slowly, carefully raises his hands.

“Want my CT number?” he asks dryly.

“Will you give it to me if I ask?” his captor retorts, and Wolffe snorts.

“I’d tell you to get karked,” he says, and turns, just as the lightsaber deactivates. The sight of the young man wrapped in wet Jedi robes makes something catch and twist in his chest, and he breathes out, low and rough as he takes a step forward. “Hey, kid.”

“Not a kid anymore,” Caleb Dume retorts, but there’s relief in his scarred face, and the takes a step closer, lets Wolffe grip his shoulder tightly in greeting.

There's more muscle under Wolffe’s grip than he remembers, but more bone, too. Yavin IV isn't exactly a hotspot when it comes to fine dining, Wolffe assumes, eyeing the basket in Caleb's free hand. It’s bristling with what looks like roots and leaves, and while it’s probably enough to survive on, Wolffe decides he’ll have to go hunting for them before he leaves.

“Anything gone wrong here yet?” he asks, and Caleb shakes his head, turning away from the steppingstones Wolffe noticed and instead heading for a set of stairs carved into the temple’s face. They lead up about twenty feet, then turn, but Caleb doesn’t follow them. He goes the opposite way, ducking under an overhang of stone and sliding back into the shadows, then seeming to vanish.

“Not more than it already was,” Caleb says, voice carrying out of the apparent opening. “The rain makes it hard, sometimes.”

Wolffe gives the stone a suspicious look, but follows Caleb, one hand outstretched. There's a narrow gap between the surface stones of the pyramid and the ones behind it, and the gap turns into a passage a handful of feet on, once Wolffe has squeezed through the opening. Caleb is waiting for him, smirking a little, and Wolffe rolls his eyes at the kid, straightening up.

“Not all of us are beanpoles,” he says, unimpressed. “I'm wearing _armor_.”

“Of course,” Caleb says, though he still looks amused. Turning, he leads the way down the corridor, where a handful of lights still glow. They're dull, scattered along too great a distance for any sort of steady illumination, but it’s enough to keep Wolffe from tripping over his own feet in the gloom as they descend.

“Other entrance a decoy?” he asks, careful of his feet around a sharp turn that tumbles down into a narrow stairway.

“We thought it would be a good idea,” Caleb confirms. “We’ve been finding enough other passageways out that we could block it up and just use less obvious ones. Unless Vader himself finds us, no one’s going to be able to get in through the main door without heavy equipment or charges, and we’ll notice those.”

The very _idea_ of Vader making it here, finding them, has Wolffe’s skin crawling, nausea turning in his stomach. So karking many other Jedi have been hunted down and slaughtered over the past few years, and every time Wolffe thinks someone is safe—

Well. He learned from what happened to Eeth Koth. No one’s ever safe. Not even Jedi who left the Order long before the Republic fell.

Finally, just as Wolffe’s knees are starting to twinge, the stairs level out into a ground-floor room, more hallways leading off. This place at least Wolffe recognizes, though it’s been tided and made homier since the last time he was here. There's a kitchen set up along one wall, and a table that looks like it was painstakingly repaired, and three chairs.

One of them has ropes on it, like whoever sits there has to get tied down, and something aches in Wolffe’s chest at the sight.

He doesn’t question it, though. Drops his pack by the edge of the stairs, stripping off his rain gear, and asks, “He around, or did you both decide it was a good idea to go wandering through the jungle?”

Caleb rolls his eyes, which is _definitely_ not an expression Wolffe has had any influence on. “He was sleeping when I left,” he says, and before Wolffe can protest, he adds, “We talked about me going last night. Like I said, the rain’s hard on him.”

Alarm still itches at Wolffe’s spine, but he breaths out, forces himself to nod. “Same bedroom?” he asks gruffly.

Caleb very definitely wrinkles his nose. “I’m going to go up to the upper levels,” he says, very pointedly. “There's a storage room I've been cleaning out, and I'm going to go there and clean it and pretend that you're just _talking about work_ —”

Wolffe laughs, rusty and raw, and feels something settle in his chest, warm and loose and easy. He takes this whole karking situation, but—

At least here, he hates it just a little less.

“We’ll probably do that, too,” he says. “If it eases your mind, kid.”

Caleb pulls a face. “Not at all,” he says, a little mournful, and drops his basket on the table, then tosses his cloak haphazardly onto a peg by the stove. It almost slips off as he leaps up the stairs, and Wolffe catches it before it can hit the ground with a roll of his eyes.

“Be _careful_ ,” he calls, and Caleb leaps from the corner of the stairs, right across the open space of the little room, and lands in an open passage that leads up into the rock.

“I'm always careful,” he says, haughty, and vanishes before Wolffe can laugh at what is so clearly and obviously a definite joke. Neither Caleb nor any other Jedi like him has ever been careful in all of history, and Wolffe dares anyone to try and find an example to prove him wrong.

Still. He’s not about to protest Caleb removing himself from the area for a little while.

The hallway off the kitchen splits, but this at least is familiar, and Wolffe takes the left-hand corridor, follows it up an easy slope and around a bend, and steps into a pool of light. Somewhere high above, a skylight lets in the glow of the jungle, and there's a watery brightness to the room that opens up. It’s large, but simple, clearly converted from a space that wasn’t meant to be a bedroom, with a handmade bed and a patched mattress and a carpet that’s more moss than anything. Along one wall, a charging unit blinks, cables tunneling through the wall to keep it connected, and there's a table with mechanical bits scattered across it. On a small stump that’s been sanded into a table, a familiar lightsaber rests, and Wolffe eyes it for a long moment, then takes a breath.

The body on the bed is still sleeping peacefully, and Wolffe _knows_ what it means, that this man trusts him enough, instinctive and unhesitating, for him to not even stir when Wolffe invades his last refuge.

Slowly, methodically, Wolffe strips off his plastoid chestplate, the bracers, the gloves. The rest of his armor, Wolfpack grey, is hidden away, not something to be used any more. Something to be mourned, because the Wolfpack turned on Plo, their general, their _friend_ , and Wolffe can't look at his armor without remembering that. The Rebellion has plenty of spare armor, though, scavenged from across the galaxy, and Wolffe’s content with that. It makes him look less like a clone, anyway, and that’s a benefit right now.

He leaves his boots by the door, his coat and shirt folded on the chair, his blaster leaning against the wall beside the lightsaber. With quiet steps, he crosses to the far side of the bed, pulling himself up onto the mattress and settling back against the wall.

The movement of the mattress finally makes the occupant stir, and there's a breath, a half-instant of tension before it eases again, and dark eyes slide open.

“Mace,” Wolffe says quietly. “You look like you got run over by a bantha.”

“As charming as ever, Wolffe,” Mace says dryly, and looks up at him for a long moment, eyes sweeping over all the various pieces of him. Carefully, he sits up, the whir of his mechanical hand loud in the quiet, and Wolffe can't help a faint, crooked smile.

“Sleeping the day away?” he asks pointedly, but when Mace moves, he reaches out, gets an arm around his waist and pulls him back, tucking Mace in against his side as Mace leans next to him, back braced against the stone.

“There was a flyover,” Mace admits quietly, grimly, and Wolffe’s breath catches as horror eats through his chest. “I've been taking the night watch.”

Caleb failed to mention that. Wolffe closes his eyes, scar aching, and can't quite stop his hand from curling into a fist. If the Empire is close enough that Mace and Caleb managed to pick them up, if they're closing in on Yavin IV—

Mace's flesh hand settles over Wolffe’s, squeezing gently. “Wolffe,” he says, quiet. “It’s just a precaution. No one has even attempted to land.”

“Still,” Wolffe says harshly, but he turns his hand over, lets Mace's fingers lace through his own. Breathes in, breathes out, and then leans forward.

Mace meets him halfway, as always. The press of their foreheads in the watery light is grounding, settling, and makes Wolffe’s breath come just a little bit easier.

“Still,” Mace says, quiet, “Yavin IV is a Force nexus. No one will find us here, even if they're looking.”

It’s been six years and that’s stayed true. But every day the risk of being found grows, and Wolffe can't be here all the time, can't do more than stop by and call it contacting sources when the Rebellion leaders question him. There are only stolen moments left, in between all the horrors, and Wolffe has been fighting so hard, for so long, but—it’s never enough.

“Wolffe,” Mace says, quiet, firm. “Caleb and I are fine. You're in far more danger than we are.”

“That’s a lie,” Wolffe says harshly, but when Mace's fingers slide up his arm, curl around his elbow, he tips forward. Curls into Mace, bears him down to the mattress, too thin, too worn, but Wolffe covers him, pens him in with his arms and knees and blocks the rest of the world out, and just…rests there. Breathes, and holds Mace, and feels the slow, soothing strokes of Mace's hand across his bare back.

“They made me a captain,” he says, rough, and drops his forehead on Mace's chest. “A karking captain again, after all this time.”

“The best demotion you could have gotten,” Mace observes with a touch of humor, and he’s sleep-warm and lax in Wolffe’s grip, accepting, allowing. Wolffe kisses dark skin where it’s bared by the neck of his undershirt, feels more than hears the catch of Mace's breath.

“Missed you,” he says gruffly, the closest he can come to what he actually means, but—

Mace pulls him up, kisses him, and it’s careful and gentle and a return of all the words stuck tangled in Wolffe’s throat, so maybe there are benefits to being in love with a Jedi.

Maybe there are a lot of them, even now, Wolffe thinks, and slides his hands up Mace's sides, pushing his shirt up.

“We could celebrate,” he offers, because it’s been _months_ since he was last here, and all he wants is to bury himself in Mace, to burrow under his skin and stay there for as long as the universe will allow. He’s missed this. He’s missed _them_ , Mace and Caleb and the fact that they survived, all the hope that comes with that. And even with the Empire sinking its roots deep into the galaxy, even with all the fear and death and terror of Palpatine’s rule, Vader's campaign to wipe out every last Jedi, this is—

Good. This is good. One little bit of light as the world falls apart, but it’s enough to keep Wolffe going through the darkness.

“Celebrate your demotion? That makes sense,” Mace says, a little less than steady, something warm and faintly wicked in his eyes, and Wolffe snorts and kisses him again. Again, again, again, like if he does it enough everything that’s gone wrong will cease to matter. Like the press of skin can wipe out the fact that all of Wolffe’s brothers are brainwashed, mindless slaves and nearly all of Mace's people have been burned out of existence, but—

Just them. Just them right now, and this selfish bit of pleasure and closeness in between all the fighting is the only thing that’s keeping Wolffe sane, but it’s enough.

Sprawled out on his stomach, every limb pleasantly heavy, Wolffe watches as Mace runs through slow, easy stretches on the floor. Once, the fact that Mace has so much energy after sex was something like an insult, pushing Wolffe to try harder and harder to tire him out, but—

He’s adjusted. It’s one of the more pleasant things he’s had to adjust to, these last few years. And besides, Mace is beautiful in the sunlight that’s breaking through, even now, scarred and thinner and honed like a blade, and Wolffe watches him with heat settled low in the pit of his stomach and simply enjoys it.

“You came with news, I assume,” Mace says, finally straightening up and crossing his legs beneath himself, unselfconscious and easy in his own skin. Wolffe follows the line of his thigh up, the scattering of fractal scars that branch across his chest from all of Sidious’s lightning. It takes effort to pull his attention back to the question, despite the seriousness of the topic.

“Rumors,” Wolffe corrects, and doesn’t move except to fold his arms beneath his head, still watching Mace. “Vader disappeared for a week, alone, and came back with a kid. Luke Skywalker.”

Mace doesn’t so much as twitch, and if Wolffe couldn’t read him as well as he can, he might think there’s no reaction at all. But he _can_ read Mace, so he sees the faint deepening of lines around his mouth, the way his eyes darken.

“Skywalker,” he repeats, low. “You're sure?”

Wolffe shrugs, more interested in watching the trail of thoughts across Mace's face than anything. He _knows_ something, and Wolffe’s suspected it for a while now, but he’s never pushed. They have enough to worry about, usually. “My sources are sure. The Rebellion’s sure. There's talk of Vader grabbing General Skywalker's kid as revenge, or for some secret project.” He studies Mace's expression, then sits up, leaning forward a little. “But you don’t think so.”

Mace breathes in through his nose, out on a low, slow breath that’s just a little too light to be a sigh. “No,” he allows after a long moment. “I have no doubt that Luke Skywalker is Anakin's son, but…Darth Vader has no reason to want revenge against Anakin.”

Wolffe frowns, trying to parse that. He’s heard, from Caleb, about Anakin's warning to the Council, Mace's last fight, his defeat at the hands of Palpatine. But—there's something he’s missing here, for Mace to be so sure of that.

“Mace?” he asks, concerned.

Mace touches the join of flesh and machinery at the edge of his prosthetic. “Anakin fell to the Dark Side,” he says, low. “He joined the fight on Palpatine’s side, and that was when it became too much for me.”

Wolffe curls his hands into fists, tries to make his lungs work. Anakin Skywalker joined the Emperor. Darth Vader is the Emperor’s right hand. Darth Vader found Anakin Skywalker's son and took him from whatever family was protecting him, for no reason anyone can find. Except—

Except, if Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader, the reasoning makes perfect sense.

“Oh,” Wolffe says carefully, not quite able to manage anything else. If Anakin hadn’t stepped in, Mace could have killed Palpatine. If Palpatine had died—

It’s too much to even contemplate.

“A theory,” Mace says evenly, but he rises, comes to sit on the bed beside Wolffe with their shoulders just brushing. “I haven’t been close enough to Vader to confirm it—”

“And you never will be,” Wolffe says harshly, immediately, desperately. He thinks of Plo's fighter going down in a spiral of flames, the way, afterwards, that the men had called him a traitor, called it a victory. _Plo's_ men, celebrating his death, like he hadn’t been _everything_ to them. Wolffe had lost Plo, in that battle, had known that something was so utterly wrong as soon as he received the Chancellor’s transmission, but—

The thought of having to suffer through that again, of having to watch Mace die too, cut down by Vader or gunned down by his own brothers, makes something hot and sick twist in Wolffe’s stomach. There have been too many losses. Wolffe thought he’d lost enough when Plo's fleet was destroyed, when the original Wolfpack was cut down to just three clones and their general. And then again, when Plo was killed, when the Jedi fell, when every last one of Wolffe’s brothers became something else. Not real, just—puppets, marching where the Sith ordered.

Losing Mace and Caleb, on top of that—surely that’s too much loss for the universe to inflict on anyone.

“Wolffe,” Mace says softly, but Wolffe doesn’t look at him, _can't_. Instead, he slides over, fits himself up against Mace's bare back and wraps his arms around him, dropping his forehead on Mace's shoulder. There's a breath, slow, and then hands over his, pressing gently.

“There's no predicting the future,” Mace says quietly. “But until I'm needed, I don’t plan to go anywhere, Wolffe.”

Until he’s needed. Wolffe makes a low, harsh sound in the back of his throat, but doesn’t argue. Both of them understand duty, and even if what they have a duty _to_ is nothing but scorched ruins at this point, it’s still there. They can't escape it. They _won't_ , of their own free will.

“Who kriffing banged _Skywalker_?” Wolffe says, biting, because if he can't lighten the mood it’s going to crush him entirely. “How was anyone willing to get that much karking disaster all over them?”

Mace snorts, slotting his fingers, mechanical and flesh, through Wolffe’s, and Wolffe squeezes tightly. “Senator Amidala,” Mace offers, with the complete certainty that says there was never any other option. “I had such high hopes for her taste.”

Wolffe huffs a laugh, not quite able to help it. “General Kenobi was _right there_ ,” he says, and Mace makes a pained sound.

“The last thing Obi-Wan needed was _another_ planetary ruler hopelessly in love with him,” he says dryly. “Though perhaps it would have worked out better for the boy.”

“Darth Vader as a father isn't something I’d wish on my worst enemy,” Wolffe mutters, and feels Mace's quiet huff. There's a sigh, and Mace leans back into him, tips his head back to press his temple against Wolffe’s. Wolffe closes his eyes, enjoying the weight of him, the familiarity, the closeness. He can feel Mace's heartbeat, and—that’s good, too.

But there are still other things that need Wolffe’s attention, and he forces himself to ignore the want, the desire to push Mace down to the bed again and explore every inch of his body one more time. Thinks of the third chair in the kitchen with its ropes, of the scars on Caleb's face, which are more than enough to sober him, and asks quietly, “How is he?”

There's a long, long pause before Mace answers. “Better, I believe,” he says carefully. “Even when I bring him his food, he’s less…aggressive, now. He laughed with Caleb the other day.”

Wolffe needs to go see him, but…it hurts. Every karking time, it hurts.

Mace turns his head, kisses Wolffe’s hair. It makes Wolffe tighten his grip, and he just—

Hangs on, and breathes, and lets himself wait just a little bit longer before the real world calls him back.

The third occupied room is removed from the rest, down a set of twisting hallways and up three flights of stairs, each landing sporting a locked door. Wolffe has the key, though he rarely has to use it; as soon as he mentions he’s going, Caleb usually escorts him, unlocking every door and taking the lead.

This time, though, Caleb is still absent, cleaning his storeroom, and Wolffe makes the walk alone.

Past the third locked door, which Wolffe carefully relocks behind himself, there's another door, barred from the outside. It has a lock as well, a keypad, and Wolffe punches in Ponds’s old CT number, followed by Neyo’s, and tries not to think about how Mace still mourns both of his old commanders equally, even though Neyo is technically still alive. Even though Neyo killed one of Mace's best friends in cold blood. It’s just the kind of man Mace is, and Wolffe ignores the lump in his throat as the lock clicks and goes green.

When he pushes the door open, though, he stops short.

“Don’t give me that look,” Grey says, from where he’s seated on the floor behind the bars. There's what looks like a table in pieces on the floor around him, a half-assembled leg in his lap. The small knife he’s holding makes something in Wolffe’s stomach twist, but Grey doesn’t seem to have any intent on using it against him. “I made Mace and Caleb put them in. if they're going to be giving me weapons, there needs to be something sturdier keeping me in here.”

Logical, Wolffe allows, and forces his lungs to keep working. “You mean you stopped giving Caleb scars?” he asks, folding his arms, and it’s a low blow, but—

Grey closes his eyes, expression twisting. Opens his mouth, then pauses, closes it again.

“Asshole,” he finally says, ragged.

Wolffe refuses to admit he’s right. “They still feeding you?” he asks harshly.

“Would you blame them if they didn’t?” Grey returns, quiet, and the look on his face is worn, haggard as he leans back, setting the knife aside.

“I told them to execute you, when the dragged you back here,” Wolffe says honestly. “And then after you tried to kill Mace the second time.”

For a moment, he thinks Grey is going to cry. His _vod_ curls in on himself, wrapping his arms around his hide like he’s trying to hide, and his breath rasps in his throat. “They should have,” he whispers. “I don’t—I don’t know why—”

“You tried to cut Caleb's face open,” Wolffe says ruthlessly, and he can see it, the fractures, the cracks, the ways Grey is breaking under his words. “You put a knife to Mace's throat and—”

“I _know_!” Grey snarls, and in an instant he’s on his feet, a bare handful of centimeters from the bars. “I _killed my general_ , Wolffe. I _murdered_ Depa! What the hell do you want from me?”

“The _reason_ ,” Wolffe snarls right back, and there's a ringing in his head, the smell of smoke in his nose, the image of Plo's fighter spiraling out of the sky and smashing into the towers on Cato Nemoidia right behind his eyelids. “Kriffing _why_ did you betray them?”

Grey’s expression twists, fractures, and he crumples, sitting down hard. He wraps his hands around the bars, leaning forward to press his forehead to them, and every breath hitches as he sits there for a long, long minute.

“They were traitors,” Grey whispers. “We had to.”

Wolffe’s chest feels hollowed out, but he crouches down, wraps his own hands over Grey’s. Remembers, on Kamino, the way Grey was, easygoing but as stubborn as a goat. The way he was with General Billaba, too, and the way he looked at her. The way she looked _back_.

“She loved you,” he says, and Grey’s next breath is a sob, choked and awful. He curls in on himself, forehead pressing against the bars, and doesn’t move.

“I know,” he says, and his voice cracks. “I loved her too. But she was a traitor. They all were. Caleb, and Depa too. We had to. We had our orders. Good soldiers follow orders.”

“But you saved Caleb,” Wolffe says, and he doesn’t _understand_. So many brothers, so many _vode_ who loved their generals, who would have died for them, and they all turned around and shot their Jedi. Killed them, in one instant, with one order, and then hunted down all the survivors and executed them.

“Disobeyed orders,” Grey says, ragged. “It was—I _could_. Stance, and Styles—they couldn’t disobey, didn’t want to. But—I had to. It was _Caleb_. Gen—the traitor, she— _Depa_ loved him. I love him too.”

“You don’t even know what she was to you,” Wolffe says, but this is tired, not an accusation. He’s asked this before, but—Grey is better now. There still aren’t any answers, but he’s hesitating over what words he uses. _Traitors_ sounds rote, practiced, but not like he believes it.

“Of course I do,” Grey says, closing his eyes, and the words break. “She was Depa.”

He’s crying. His cheeks are wet. Wolffe’s own breath rasps in his throat, but he doesn’t know what to say.

Jag had loved Plo with all the fervor of a man saved. Plo was the one who kept him from being decommissioned, after his disgrace, and Wolffe had always known there was no clone in the whole GAR who would have fought harder to keep Plo from getting so much as a scratch. And yet, just like Grey and Depa, he’d shot Plo out of the sky and considered it a victory after three simple words from the Chancellor.

Wolffe doesn’t know what the hell happened. Doesn’t know what turned millions of men into puppets and blank armor and a series of numbers. Doesn’t know what shattered Grey, broke him apart until he can barely look at the boy who used to practically be a son to him.

Whatever it is, though, Wolffe hates it more than he’s ever hated anything before.

“Grey?” a quiet voice says.

Grey twitches. He lifts his head, mouth twisting, but when he says, “Caleb,” it’s a soft thing, well-worn.

Caleb hastily strips out of his robe, drops to his knees next to Wolffe, and he slides his arms through the bars, reaches out. Grey chokes on a sob, or maybe a laugh, and he reaches back, grabs Caleb. Hugs him, as tight as he can with the bars in the way, and his face is caught up like he’s in pain but he still doesn’t let go.

Wolffe keeps one hand on his blaster and doesn’t let himself be swayed. Caleb's scars are never going to fade, but Wolffe can at least keep him from getting any more.

“I didn’t want to,” Grey says, a bare, broken sound. “Caleb, I didn’t want to. But we had orders. Good soldiers follow orders.”

“I know,” Caleb says, and he doesn’t move, doesn’t let go of Grey even though Wolffe can see the look on his face, grief and threads of anger and too much regret. “I know, Grey. There are no orders here, though. You're okay.”

Silently, still without answers, Wolffe rises to his feet. He takes a step back, not able to watch Grey cry in Caleb's arms, silent and all the more painful for it, and turns away. Caleb's not in danger right now. That’s clear enough that even Wolffe can see it.

Mace is waiting just outside the last of the locked stairway doors when Wolffe emerges, leaning back against a wall. Wolffe stops a handful of paces from him, full of a roil of emotion he can't control, can't even name. His chest aches, full of fire, and his hands are clenched so tightly into fists that his nails are cutting into his palms.

“I hate him,” he confesses, harsh, furious, and isn't even sure if he means Grey, crying in the arms of the boy he practically orphaned and then saved, or Jag and the quietly devoted way he watched Plo, always so admiring. Or maybe he just means whatever took some of the best men, the most loyal men, men who _loved_ their Jedi, and turned them into betrayers. Into _executioners_.

“It would be easier if you hated him,” Mace says, because he’s always too blunt, always too wise. Wolffe closes his eyes, rubs his hands over his face, and won't admit that Mace is right. _Can't_ , yet.

“Why would the clones turn on their Jedi?” he asks, as if Mace has any more answers than he does. “Kriffing _why_?”

“I don’t know,” Mace says. When Wolffe swallows roughly, looks up at him, he looks—worn. Grieving.

Mace lost just as much as Wolffe, when the Republic fell. Wolffe’s family was the Wolfpack, was Plo. Mace's was the whole Order, maybe even the whole Republic. And just like Wolffe, he can never get any of that back.

Wolffe doesn’t move when Mace steps closer, but when a hand cups his elbow, pulls him in, he doesn’t fight it. Leans against Mace, burying his face in his shoulder, and breathes.

Mace is warm, and steady. He feels like light, and Wolffe loves him as desperately as anyone drowning in darkness would love a flame.

Grey loves Caleb, too. Like a father, like a betrayer, like someone lost finding a path, and Wolffe can see that, knows it, feels it, but—

There are too many questions, and Wolffe is never going to find answers. Plo's death, Depa's death, the death of so many thousands of Jedi—he’s never going to have an answer for why they happened.

Mace holds him in the murky light, lets Wolffe hang on to his shoulders with a bruising grip and doesn’t move. Breathes out, low and quiet, in Wolffe’s greying hair, and curls his arm around his back. There's the distant sound of rain, the heat of Mace's body, the steady reassurance of his presence, and—

Wolffe tells himself that it’s enough, and almost believes it.


End file.
